Archive for the Cardigans Category

Somebody asked recently if I had “given up” writing this blog. No, not really. I took a little break from it, but I was always planning to return in the time of my country’s greatest need. I’m like the King Arthur of sophomoric dick jokes. But it’s not always easy to find new things to say about drunken acts of physical love. I’ve been wondering if maybe I should expand my range a little, by commenting on Recent Developments in Feminism. I have a lot of opinions. Here, I’ll give it a shot. Here are some Recent Developments in Feminism that happened while I was away.

1. Fling candy bar. The feminist blogosphere reported on this sparkly, low-calorie candy bar with pink packaging, being marketed with the tag line “pleasure yourself.” People are mad because it’s being sold as the candy bar for women, and the whole thing is so sexist. Hey, wait a minute, though! Isn’t all candy for women? Am I right, ladies? (Because we love chocolate.) The real challenge would be to keep women away from it! You’d have to go to extreme lengths. The advertising slogan would have to be something like “The candy bar that rapes your mouth with flavor!”.

My own suggestion, if marketers want to create a candy bar that women won’t buy, is to put a picture of a spider on the packaging. “Spider candy bar: There’s a spider in the bathtub!” It would be a marketing disaster.

The anti-Fling.

2. The pull-out method. Science has discovered that the withdrawal method of birth control is more effective than it was previously though to be. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Finally, some good news! I was all, “when are they going to release a scientific study about something I like?”

3.Happiness gap. On a less cheerful note, scientists (different ones) discovered by reviewing data that today’s women report being less happy than women did 40 years ago. Somebody named Douthat in the New York Times (who didn’t actually read the article) blames this development on the women’s movement. But then he tries to pretend he’s all feminist by making the following suggestion: “There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s—” by stigmatizing men who act “sexually irresponsible.” Noooo! Don’t fall for it, ladies; it’s a trap! The very worst thing we could do right now is start shaming male sluts for their promiscuous behavior! It’s May! It’s getting all steamy and torrid out! We need more male sluts around, not fewer! The more, the better, because who else is gonna do the job? Instead of being so judgmental, the Times should be encouraging men to explore their sexuality.

“Maureen” probably agrees with me. She’s a single mother of two who suffers from a little problem: “Their dad has every excuse in the world to cancel taking them every other Saturday night like he’s supposed to. So…because I’m a conscientious mom (and a broke one that can’t afford an overnight babysitter), I don’t bring guys home. So I don’t get laid nearly as often as I should.” That’s terrible. Not to be discouraged, Maureen went looking for companionship on Plentyoffish, a dating website whose name is intended to convey the idea “many fish in the sea,” yet which appears, whenever I look at it, to say “Plenty Offish,” and thus to hold out the possibility of meeting people who are “plenty” standoffish or unapproachable. Anyhow, it worked well for her. She soon met “Jude,” a “totally hot” man about her age who said he was looking for friends. She lives in Boston, he lives in Rhode Island.

Jude’s profile included “a quote I really liked, something like ‘it’s not who you have known the longest; it’s about who has stayed and never left.’ I think that was what led me to send him an email, saying I liked his quotes and he had a nice profile. When talking to him on the phone I found him really straightforward, funny and smart. He’s studying for the CPA exam, working as a recruiter… seems to have his life on track pretty much.” They remained phone friends for a couple of weeks.

She adds that he seemed “like a great guy that fools around a bit on the side.” Hey, wait a minute! What “side”? The “side” of what? Well, during their time on the phone, he had “told me all about his live-in girlfriend and their 4 month old, and how the one time they fought recently she wouldn’t let him see his daughter. So… he’s sticking it out for a while and partying on the side.” How scandalous! But there’s no harm in being friends. So she agreed to go hang out with him some night when the kids weren’t around.

The day finally came when she had a Saturday night free. Brutus had friends coming in from Connecticut, and they all agreed to meet at the Rattlesnake Bar in Boston. “Not having been out in a while and feeling a little awkward on my first night out in a while, I opted for a short, black miniskirt from H&M, four-inch heels (kinda funky looking with 2 small buckles on the front), a silk black camisole (Kenneth Cole) and black cardigan with 3/4 sleeves (I think it was from Anne Taylor).”

Black silk camisole

Ann Taylor cardigan

Black stiletto #1

Black stiletto #2

Just for the heck of it, stiletto boot

“Practiced my smoky eye look so I wouldn’t look like a raccoon and I was good to go. So. I get there and Jude is late… texts me and tells me one of his friends is already there. Turns out he’s sitting next to me at the bar. We chat, he’s cool but zero attraction factor. Jude soon arrives with some friends, and others arrive right behind him. It is me and six men: a white guy from Cypress, the white guy from the bar (from somewhere in New England but I don’t remember where), two black guys from the Caribbean, two black American guys… and me, the pasty Irish chick. But I was lookin’ kinda cute.”

Jude “was taller than I expected, dressed really well, was really outgoing and had cool-looking dreads that went halfway down his back (very well kept and pulled back).” But sparks didn’t really fly: “It’s funny but when I met him I was already three deep in terms of White Russians and the thought crossed my mind that he was hotter than I thought he would be but I was kind of distracted by being surrounded by all these young men, none of whom I actually ‘knew.'”

Specifically, her attention had been engaged by one of his friends, “T.”, whom she thought was “fine as hell.” This was “a black American guy from CT, 6’3 with 4 inch braids of some sort. Very sexy eyes. Wearing jeans, Timberlands, t-shirt and jean jacket with some kind of design on the back. And a baseball hat.” She ended up chatting with him, because Jude was a few seats away, and was busy playing host to his old college friends. The whole gang had settled in at a table over drinks and appetizers. T. revealed that he is a “music producer,” and she “showed great restraint in my inebriated state by not rolling my eyes.”

It wasn’t clear if T. returned her interest, because he was too busy checking out the other women in the room. He “made a point of getting a good look at the ass of one as she sauntered by on her way to the ladies room,” and “even left the table at one point to speak to two women at another table, so “the fact that he is obviously a player was hard to ignore.” He excused this by opining “that men are animals and as such can’t be held totally responsible for this type of behavior. I replied that a lot of men claim to be animals but have no follow-through when it’s time to prove it.” Well played, madam, well played.

They decided to leave the Rattlesnake and go to the Whiskey Bar. The guys were all drunk and she had to carry one of them up the hill. Recollections start to grow indistinct at this point, but they had some more drinks, and then “everyone decides to go to a diner in Somerville. One guy’s car got towed so they all piled into an SUV, and I followed with the cute guy.” Hey, wait a minute! Should you be driving? Technically, there could be some traces of alcohol left in your system from the three White Russians, two Southern Comfort and cokes, and then two more more White Russian you just finished drinking five minutes ago! I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but experts say that drinking alcoholic beverages can impair your judgment and reflexes! Sure enough, it did, “which is how, later on, I managed to drive right over a curb in Somerville, scaring my sleeping passenger half to death.”

T. had fallen into a drunken stupor. It was 3 a.m. They drove “what seems like endlessly.” When they got to the diner, it was closed. They decided to head to Greg’s place (one of the guys, whom Maureen describes as “short”). “Everyone has something to eat and conveniently all of the guys except the cutie go to one bedroom that has a bed and couch (and floor) and me and (yes, as you can probably tell by now I am not sure of his name…T? for Trey maybe?) cutie in another room on a futon.”

“Where we cuddled up and got naked fast (it was, after all, nearly 5 a.m. by now). He goes in the other room to get a condom from a friend (none turned up in his quick search of the bedroom we were in) and he gets some kind of generic condom that was apparently so old as to be nearly useless.” They went at it for a while, “but condom difficulties (and drunken exhaustion) had us taking a break. We both fell asleep.” It was morning two hours later, so they got up and exchanged numbers.

T. said he’d call her next time he was in Boston, and we all know what that means. “Whatever, that’s fine. I later asked Jude (casually, of course) how old T. was… he said around 24. Wow. I’m 36… glad I didn’t ask him that night when the thought crossed my mind. I just became an accidental cougar. But at least I got laid.”

Sorry for the gap in posting; I was doing really important stuff. While I was gone, my old nemesis Joe the Plumber gave a nonsensical speech to a group of teabaggers, the nation engaged in a vigorous (sort of) debate about sex-positive feminism, and I got bronchitis or something.

Say, if you’d like to see more updates in this spaces, why not e-mail me and tell me about your recent exploits? I am currently seeking CTGML stories that feature (1) makeup sex between couples, and (2) guys as the protagonist, especially gay guys (but straight guys too). But raunchy stories from straight women, like the subject of today’s story, are always appreciated.

Blonde vixen “Debby” is a political blogger who lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Every so often she visits her grandfather “John” and his wife, who live in Tahoe — she’s an expert skier. One weekend this winter, she went up there for a short ski vacation. On one of her first nights in town, she and John went out to a restaurant that featured lots of unusual game, like buffalo, antelope, and elk. She was still wearing ski clothes from her day outside, but likes to go for a look more glamorous than the natural/sporty vibe most ladies project there (or so she claims — I don’t know anything about the topic; I am frightened of skiing, and don’t have any relations that do any leisure activities more glamorous than copy-editing), so she was wearing black Under Armour leggings and a tight black ski jacket by Salomon, with heavy black eyeliner.

Salomon jacket

Kohl eyeliner

As she and her grandpa were ordering a bottle of wine, she noticed their “hot young server.” He had “classic male” good looks, and he looked admiringly back at her. Debby ordered the antelope. She asked for medium rare; grandpa made the interaction weird by saying “She’s a meat eater, she likes blood on her plate!” But when the antelope showed up, it was dry and overdone, and she had to send it back.

The replacement piece of antelope, when Seth the waiter brought it, was “fabulous.” This time he and them ended up getting into a conversation. He revealed that he’s from the same state the she is, and that he was in the process of applying to law school, and that he was a skier rather than a snowboarder. Debby’s grandfather approved of these facts. (He is prejudiced against snowboarders, on the ground that they tear up the snow too much, or something.) He seemed impressed by the guy and, noticing the sparks flying between him and Debby, “conveys that he thinks I should get on it.”

He helped out with this by supplying a pretext, saying something along the lines of “my granddaughter has this blog, she’s doing a story on snowboard clothing.” She wasn’t doing any such thing. I didn’t understand why he brought snowboarding into it when all three of them were skiers, and according to Debby, “it didn’t really make any sense.” She can’t remember how on earth he introduced this topic in the first place. Anyhow, he suggested they meet up so she could interview Seth. “Are you available tomorrow?”, he asked. Meanwhile, she and Seth were looking each other in they eyes, and he looked, in her words, like he “can’t believe this is being handed to him.” She was pretty pleased about it, too. (It sounds like kind of unusual behavior on John’s part, but again, what do I know? Both my grandfathers drank themselves to death before I was born.)

Seth said “No, I’m not available.” and John asked “What about tonight?”, and handed him her name and number on a piece of paper. When they walked out of the restaurant shortly afterwards, news of the little romance was already being bruited about among the staff. The bartender called out “hey, don’t forget to call Ben!” Debby was in a relaxed mood, having “been drinking all day with cougars” that she’d met on the slopes, and she was “laughing her ass off” about the situation.

She called Seth a couple of hours later, saying she would be at this bar the Dusty Boot later that evening, and did he want to meet for a drink. He did. He texted her a while later, saying “I’m at the Dusty Boot.” She had changed into dark gray BDG jeans from Urban Outfitters, white cowboy boots, a loose black tank top, and a cardigan also from Urban Outfitters.

BDG jeans

Urban Outfitters cardigan

White cowboy boot

A bunch of her new Tahoe friends were at the bar, and had a good time. She and Seth drank tequila with lime and talked about “kayaks” and “ice climbing.” He told her about how he got fed on the job by eating people’s sendbacks, and explained his policy as “I would eat anybody’s food I would make out with.” “So you ate that burned-up piece of antelope?” He said no, he didn’t eat the burned antelope. (What a ridiculous sentence to have to type.)

“So you wouldn’t eat my antelope?”

“No, I would.”

Having gotten that out of the way, they kept talking for a while; he said “do you wanna go make out in the bathroom?”, and she said “no, I wanna go play in the snow.” They went to her car and got a flask of tequila. They ran around until they found a “snow-enclosed gondola,” got inside and started “making out furiously.” “Before I knew it, my pants were down, and I was like ‘What am I doing, no.'” That sounds uncomfortable, but also, she revealed to me at this point that when she stays with the old folks, she has a 12 p.m. curfew. What the heck? So they both started walking back to her condo entrance.

Instead of separating, though, they went into the locker rooms that the building has for people to store their ski equipment, where they again started “makin’ out like crazy.” Debby didn’t feel she could afford to get into trouble, so she came up with a plan. She said “I have to leave and come back.” Seth said “I’ll wait for you.” She went upstairs, found her grandpa, and said “okay, I came back, I’m gonna go back out,” all petulant-like. John was amenable to this, only saying “don’t stay out too long.”

She went back down to the locker room and found Seth, and they resumed “makin’ out all hard.” Finally, the clothes came off, and “we did it up against a locker. It was really hot.” One might think this would be difficult, especially since she’s short, but she claimed they did not suffer from any logistical difficulties. Then they said goodbye, she went upstairs to bed, and she hasn’t seen him again.

EDITED TO ADD that I share your confusion about this story, readers. Debby is in her 20s and doesn’t need a curfew. On the other hand, when I visit my parents, I can’t even go to CVS without briefing them on where I’m going, how long I’ll be gone, and how I won’t wreck the car on the way home. That is what family members are like. On the other hand, if her grandfather is of a protective bent, why pimp out her and her juicy antelope to a virile young man? Debby’s grandfather sounds like a weirdo.

We Americans, evidently, are a patient people. After George W. Bush was elected, we sat through five years of epic mistakes and colossal blunders before we began punishing him with low approval ratings. After that, we had to endure two more years of tragic failures and staggering hubris before we could do anything about getting rid of him — only to embark upon the longest and most ridiculous electoral journey known to Man. We waited two hundred thirty-three years to inaugurate our first African-American president! LOL, are you sure that’s long enough? Maybe we should give the white guys a few more chances first, just to be sure.

But what if you’re like me, and you don’t really have this kind of patient disposition? You don’t want to sit through all the foreplay and coy banter, you want to get to the good stuff right away. For you, I’ve created BOOTY SHORTS, a new occasional feature on this website. BOOTY SHORTS will present CTGML anecdotes in a pithier and less digressive format. They’re quicker to read, quicker to write (!) — and perfect for those of you who’ve never written to me because you have just too darn many crazy hookup stories to choose one. Send ’em all in! Such a person is Philia, and Part I of her BOOTY SHORTS series is below.

“So…I’ve been counting and I’ve seen 8 padiddles since the last time we hung out.”
“Fuck, Dean, 8? I’m not even wearing 8 pieces of clothing.”

“This was a typical conversation between me and my friend ‘Dean’ a couple of summers ago. Dean was my ex-boyfriend’s friend and roommate, and so he resisted the urge to give in to the romantic chemistry between us for a long time. What a champ. Until, as it sometimes happens, the universe presented us with the perfect opportunity to get exactly where we wanted to go without really ‘going there’: padiddles.”

“It seems like the game of padiddles differs greatly regionally, so allow me to explain our version: A “padiddle” is a car with only one headlight. The way you play the game is, while driving, if you see a padiddle, you have to call it before the others in the car — while simultaneously hitting the ceiling. Whoever calls the padiddle first gets to pick which article of clothing the other person will take off. Innocent enough.” In the versions I’ve heard about, the one who spots the padiddle either punches her companion, or is owed a kiss, and furthermore, a car missing a back taillight is a “padunkle.” One hesitates to think what ass-centric sexual favors a padunkle sighting would enable one to demand.

In their version, “we took it a step farther: soon the game of ‘padiddles’ developed into the concept of ‘retroactive padiddles’ — that is, we could save our ‘padiddles’ until they added up to a significant number, like 8… and then the other person would be required to take off all of their clothing. Then we’d do: nothing. The majority of our summer was spent in the awkward space where nakedness, sexual tension, and the greatest level of self control I’ve ever seen in a man combine.”

“Then one night, while we were driving around town (padiddles adding up) Matt made a bold suggestion:”

“Hey, you know those abandoned cargo trains over by the theater?”
“Yeah, what about them?”
“Well, in 20 years, I’ve never once seen them move. I’ve always wanted to go up there and explore them, but nobody has ever had the guts to do it with me.”

“And so, this is how we found ourselves, pressed against each other on the grate in between two of the cars, completely naked once again.”

“He leaned towards me, about to take the giant leap into intimacy that would have been our first kiss. Except…”

“All of the sudden, there was a flash of light. And by flash of light I mean a blinding, insanely bright light washing over the entirety of our naked bodies. And along with that blinding light there was a noise, a familiar one: the sound of a train.”

“A train. Coming straight at us. And along with the train, a conductor standing on the front, getting the perfect view of our glistening naked bodies, and secondarily the looks of utter horror that spread immediately across our faces.”

“ABANDONED TRAINS, DEAN?” I whisper-screamed as we sprinted between the tracks, throwing clothes at each other and attempting to dress ourselves as the train pulled into the station.

“Finally, somehow, we made it back to his car without being caught by the conductor or the cops, and with all our clothing and less of our dignity in hand.” All was well, until he realized his cell phone was missing.

“Wait… which train is it that’s moving?”
“Fuck.”
“That’s… that’s the train we were on, isn’t it?”
“Fuck.”

As the train passed by us we saw the haunting words scrawled across its side: “Connecticut to Pennsylvania.”

“My phone… my phone’s going to Pennsylvania.”
“We… WE could’ve been going to Pennsylvania.”
“We… we could’ve been going to Pennsylvania naked.”

UPDATE: I saw Marilyn yesterday, and she was full of complaints about an affliction called “pash rash,” an unsightly facial skin irritation that results from making out with a stubble-y dude. She seems to find it bitterly ironic that experiencing “passion” should have such a negative effect on one’s actual attractiveness. It’s a classic life-art dichotomy — like in The Picture of Dorian Grey — where you can have intense experience or aesthetic perfection, but not both. I can sympathize with her. I have unruly hair, and I need to put a lot of products on my skin to make it not greasy, plus my eyes get irritated if I don’t take out my contact lenses; if I go to sleep at someone else’s house, it’s fuckin’ chaos.

All of these are “luxury problems” rather than real problems, though. By contrast, my e-mail correspondant “Claudette” says that she was celibate for over two years before the incident I’m about to relate. Claudette is in her 20’s and was living in Delaware at the time. She claims that “I am fat, frumpy, and plain. I look like Ina Garten. On a good day, if you’re feeling generous, I look like a zaftig Nigella Lawson without the sex appeal.” I am reluctant to believe any of this. I tend to think all my readers are beautiful, or at least above-average looking, like a drunk Lake Woebegone. But you can picture her as plain if it makes her seem more relate-able to you.

She writes that “in January, I met a group of friends in Newark, N.J. for a basketball game.” They were going out to the bars in Manhattan later, so she needed an outfit that was cute, walkable, and suited to a range of temperatures. “I started with my beautiful Lucchese cowboy boots, a souvenir from a trip to Lake Tahoe, and worked backward from there.”

Hot pink cotton panties
Black cashmere socks {editor’s note: How are you supposed to wash cashmere socks? Surely you don’t need to take them to the dry cleaner’s? I just put mine in the washing machine, but I really feel guilty about it.}

When Claudette got dressed in the evening, she had no reason to think anyone would be scrutinizing her matching lingerie and rich-person socks. “But when I arrived at the arena, by coincidence I was seated next to a spectacular-looking boy. I mean, if I had grown a man in a lab, he is what I would have created. He was thoughtful, funny, brainy, generous, arty, charming (he grew up in Louisiana, so he had that delicious Southern boy appeal) and so unbelievably hot that I thought, ‘There is no possible way I will be able to convince this boy to make out with me, so I guess I’ll just be myself.'”

They went to a bar in the Village called The Kettle of Fish, where ” I drank beer, I ate junk food, I told dirty jokes, I told him to give me all his quarters so I could play pinball, I said ‘watch this’ and stole a bottle of Cabernet from the bar, and at some point I realized he’d spent the whole night by my side.”

“At around midnight, I did something I’m not terribly proud of. I turned to the group and whined, “You guys, I’m having too much fun to get the train back home. Can I sleep on someone’s couch?” Why not be proud of this brilliant line? It’s like a more tactful version of “do you want to come up and see my etchings?”, and besides, it worked.

“He offered. I accepted. I did not sleep on the couch.” She didn’t even leave his apartment until the following afternoon! She concludes her story by lamenting, “I miss that guy.” Wait, what happened? Why aren’t they engaged by now? “I WISH we were engaged!” It turns out they went on, like, two dates, but “after a two-hour phone conversation one night, I screwed up my courage and asked him if we could watch the Superbowl together, and I didn’t hear from him for three weeks. Sad panda.”

Astonishingly, it seems this gentleman has some sort of emotional issues. Claudette was left with pash rash and heartbreak, but she still has the hot boots, so maybe we will be hearing from her soon?